OneMoreDaySK wrote:Question: Does Murphy's law apply to the bad events themselves? e.g. can your two Hispanic men suddenly get attack by, oh say, raptors? And does the law apply to the raptors as well? And so on and so forth?

See, Murphy's Law (at least in its typical form) is demonstrably false. There are several times when something could have gone wrong but didn't.

There are two similar rules I believe in though:Finagle's Law states that the perversity of the universe tends toward a a maximum. This allows good things to happen in order to lull you into a false sense of security, and it explains why so many of the things that do go wrong seem to be, purely by coincidence, part of some vast coordinated cosmic joke at your expanse.Meanwhile I forget the source, but a common maxim in engineering is "If there's a right way and a wrong way to do something, it's guaranteed that somebody will do it the wrong way." This is a simple application of the law of large numbers, and it basically means that if you design a toaster that explodes when you plug it in backwards, no matter how many warnings you apply or how stupid somebody would have to be to do it, the explosion is your fault because the toaster is capable of being plugged in backwards.

Sindri wrote:See, Murphy's Law (at least in its typical form) is demonstrably false. There are several times when something could have gone wrong but didn't.

There are two similar rules I believe in though:Finagle's Law states that the perversity of the universe tends toward a a maximum. This allows good things to happen in order to lull you into a false sense of security, and it explains why so many of the things that do go wrong seem to be, purely by coincidence, part of some vast coordinated cosmic joke at your expanse.Meanwhile I forget the source, but a common maxim in engineering is "If there's a right way and a wrong way to do something, it's guaranteed that somebody will do it the wrong way." This is a simple application of the law of large numbers, and it basically means that if you design a toaster that explodes when you plug it in backwards, no matter how many warnings you apply or how stupid somebody would have to be to do it, the explosion is your fault because the toaster is capable of being plugged in backwards.

Given the lack of definitive air power on the part of the zebras aa was probably an afterthought. Likely the winter wrap ups would have seen a large push for the zebras to use whatever airpower they possessed.

I think it looks like the equestrians relied on their air power for primary aa.

O. Hinds wrote:[spoiler=A Rather Interesting Video, I Think]By the way, any speculation on Equestrian mobile land and maritime AA? Given that operating pegasi and AAA at the same time would be tricky, what do you think the proportions are?

Admiral Stoic Rum wrote:Given the lack of definitive air power on the part of the zebras aa was probably an afterthought. Likely the winter wrap ups would have seen a large push for the zebras to use whatever airpower they possessed.

I think it looks like the equestrians relied on their air power for primary aa.

Give the presence of Thunderheads and Raptors and armored suited Pegesus and depictions of air combat it looks like anti-air technology was in it's infancy. There are no ZSU running around with radar guided missiles and quad 23mm canon. There are no M24 Dusters with dual 40mm Bofors and iron sights. In fact a 40mm bofors cannon seems to not exist. We see 12.7mm heavy machine guns and not much better. Friendship city has some sort of field gun that can toss up flak shells that do shred raptors so we are talking about WWI level air defenses.

Light, heavy and General purpose machine guns on swivel mounts to shoot at fliers, while heavies guns toss exploding shells in the air likely on timers but perhaps there are cut rate targeting fetishes or talismans that let a shell know when something is nearby to explode at best effective distance.

So you want a bit of an estimate I say Zebra AA consisted of machine guns on poles or elaborate and hard to move swivel mounts and a gun (or several) of a likely ineffective caliber. 85mm-90mm is the sweet spot as far as having a gun that can toss a shell a great distance with a big boom at the end fast enough to matter and yet still able to track targets quickly. 40mm is the sweet spot on the middle end and 20mm for the low end. 25mm, 50mm and 75mm are all the the bad calibers which straddle the line between effectiveness, 50mm is significant for how ineffective it is. To big to make automatic, to small to have a decent burst.

So if that post is about Zebra AA what about Pony AA?Simple, the same but different as they likely have swivel mounted machine guns for local defense and a bigger gun for dragon defense but likely very few in between weapons.

So Pony AA is swivel mounted light miniguns and heavy machine guns with big 76mm guns to shoot dragons with. Anything between is fought by Pegasus.

@IronMongerMethinks making a singular Crusader Mainframe was hard enough, but trying to make it multiplayer? Not really feasible methinks, unless there's a fic where a vault would've independently developed it, perhaps with excess mainframe parts that were stored there.

OneMoreDaySK wrote:@IronMongerMethinks making a singular Crusader Mainframe was hard enough, but trying to make it multiplayer? Not really feasible methinks, unless there's a fic where a vault would've independently developed it, perhaps with excess mainframe parts that were stored there.

No the calculator is just another Crusader Maneframe with brains written onto it. The only thing the Crusader provides over Celestia is Rampency which does not exist in the incredibly rare Maneframes.

One in SPP which Celestia is bound to. One in Spike's cave who's entire existence is dedicated to casting a megaspell. And one put in charge of a Stable that had defective programing. It was not even rampant just insufficiently forward thinking with several logic errors as Littlepip points out.

Adding in "multi-player" or madness does not really change it to anything other than just another Maneframe. Unless you use the original idea of the calculator. That it was a computer working to a pre-set table set by it's creators long ago. It's only intellegent enough to achieve it's objectives and lacks the creativity to do anything but a pass/fail check and move on to the next one.

I'm starting to get an idea of why I sound so stupid compared to you guys, I'm guessing you've read FoE and Horizons multiple times? Because I haven't, hell I barely remember much of what happened in Horizons and I read it from start to present.

Actually I'm somewhat of a slow reader. A side-effect of ADHD is a generally short attention span, whenever I'm reading I end up bouncing from tab to tab. Sometimes it could take me an entire day to read a single chapter of Horizons, but that's more likely because how long it is. Took me something like a month or two to get where I am.

Ironmonger wrote:I'm starting to get an idea of why I sound so stupid compared to you guys, I'm guessing you've read FoE and Horizons multiple times? Because I haven't, hell I barely remember much of what happened in Horizons and I read it from start to present.

I've read FoE twice, and I'm slowly listening through the audiobook version (Slow because chapters get released every two months and we are at chapter 23 or so). I've read PH one time and started a re-read then stopped because new chapters kept hitting.

Ironmonger wrote:Actually I'm somewhat of a slow reader. A side-effect of ADHD is a generally short attention span, whenever I'm reading I end up bouncing from tab to tab. Sometimes it could take me an entire day to read a single chapter of Horizons, but that's more likely because how long it is. Took me something like a month or two to get where I am.

I've done one full reading of each, plus going back through bits and pieces as I sought answers to specific questions. You tend to retain more if you spend more time thinking as you read instead of just going straight through it, so those who do reading reactions/chapter reviews likely remember PH a bit better, and participating in the discussion always helps.

Regarding concentration issues:

(I am by no means a psychological professional and my suggestions should not be considered a valid solution to actual learning disabilities)In my experience there seems to be a strong correlation between high intelligence and short attention span; I find it easier to focus on a single task when sleep-deprived or otherwise impaired and more difficult when my mind is as full capacity, and friends of mine with ADHD and similar problems tend to be brilliant when they do manage to focus enough to work on something. So I've come up with a theory that your mind has a certain capacity for thinking at any given time, and if it can't all be devoted to a certain task the remaining capacity goes off to occupy itself with other matters, and the problem starts when those other matters are more interesting than what you're trying to accomplish, so that sliver of your mind drags the rest of your thoughts along with. Say at some point you've got ten "thinky points" (nowhere near a perfect metaphor but not bad enough to come up with a better one) and the paper you're reading takes between 7-9 of them. That last "point" goes off to think about ponies, and before you know it your whole mind is occupied by poni and you're not getting any work done. So I find it's often beneficial to have small, controlled distractions going the whole time you're working; say you have those same 10 points available, and the same 7-9 required for your task, but instead of leaving that last 10% of your thinking capacity open, you play music that costs 2-3 to listen to. Now you've only got 7-8 devoted to your primary task so it won't be completed quite as quickly as might be optimal, but your whole mind is occupied so you won't be distracted further and you can keep working. Anyway, can't guarantee this will have any beneficial effect for you, but try it out. I recommend something complex, with multiple concurent strains to keep your mind occupied with; depending on your preferences symphonic stuff might be good, or the better electronic stuff... anything with a bagpipe tends to work pretty well for me...

I've read each once, and am listening to the audiobooks. I'm up to chapters 23 and 14, respectively, of FoE and PH. I might start a reread of FoE since I'll have a hard copy soon, but wouldn't count on it.

Ironmonger wrote:Thanks Sindri. I'm trying it out with some Turkish music (something about those Zurna horns...) and it seems to be helping. It's kinda like getting a semi-annoying kid out of your hair.

Ironmonger wrote:Thanks Sindri. I'm trying it out with some Turkish music (something about those Zurna horns...) and it seems to be helping. It's kinda like getting a semi-annoying kid out of your hair.

I'm helping!

Now I have two scenes running through the Ironmind. Pinkie as a superhero (oh dear lord help us all) and a pony on a rooftop, shouldering a rocket launcher and yelling "I'M HELPING!"